A survivor's guide to teenage parenting involving rabbit feet, four leaf clovers and going to Church on Sunday.

Thursday, 30 May 2013

Survival of the fattest

In my day and age, when we talked "six pack", it was macho talk of beer cans to be drunk to get drunk. Now my son talks of getting a "six pack" and means he seeks the carved stomach muscles to look good for the ladies.

I like to think that he is trying to emulate his old man, except my proof of a six pack is hiding under a few carbohydrate layers. I normally care not to realise this - my name is Bass Pryce and I am fat - Fatties Anonymous can do without my very large presence for a while. I consider deception is not always a bad thing, especially when facing a bar of choccy temptation. "Yes Go On" is a positive set of words methinks.

Mirrors I see now are an invention of the devil.

Sadly my belly is giving gravity a large enough mass to probably change the rotation of the earth on its axis and a contributory reason to earth-moon collision course in a million years or so. However today my belly is not all that is falling down.
As I face an eyetest that resembles a humiliation in guessing the difference between Z and F and being told it was a Y. Unless the optician was asking 'why I was there?' with 20:20, perhaps not.

As my eyesight deteriorates it has one of the advantages that I need not remove all mirrors in the house because I need only place glasses on forehead and view a blur that, I think, may have a six pack after all.

And as if to prove every action has a reaction the lanky fella is not so lanky and is filling out a tad. Although to be fair his sudden wish for a tank top may be premature.

I need to explain for the older reader that a 'tank top' is not a no-sleeve wooly pully of 70's fashion vintage, but what I would call a vest. Except by calling it a tank top, it can now be sold at thrice the price and a teenager is happy for 2 minutes or so. This Tank Top, aka vest, is worn without a shirt, pullover, cardigan or whatever. In terms of fashion statements, my view which is not universally accepted in the household, is that silence is golden.

He wants a vest to show off the bicep arcs that define an iron pumped rep-definition of a muscle, except there is a way to go before the boy will be starring in "Terminator 21". But try telling him 'way to go', is a mistake I know, but......, but I fear my advice is second to an inevitable humiliation on a parkbench amongst his friends who may smirk a tad. I can tell him don't do it, do not wear the vest in public, and silence is rusting iron.

Lessons to be learnt, unless..... I am wrong perhaps, its the new look .....non-hero-in chic